red. My uncle yielded, and it was
arranged that I should sail with the first convoy of the New Year. From
the moment of the decision I walked the earth in a delirium of
expectation. That February, I remember, was blue and mild, with soft
airs blowing up the river. Down by the Broomielaw I found a new rapture
in the smell of tar and cordage, and the queer foreign scents in my
uncle's warehouse. Every skipper and greasy sailor became for me a
figure of romance. I scanned every outland face, wondering if I should
meet it again in the New World. A negro in cotton drawers, shivering in
our northern dune, had more attraction for me than the fairest maid,
and I was eager to speak with all and every one who had crossed the
ocean. One bronzed mariner with silver earrings I entertained to three
stoups of usquebaugh, hoping for strange tales, but the little I had
from him before he grew drunk was that he had once voyaged to the
Canaries. You may imagine that I kept my fancies to myself, and was
outwardly only the sober merchant with a mind set on freights and
hogsheads. But whoever remembers his youth will know that such terms to
me were not the common parlance of trade. The very names of the
tobaccos Negro's Head, Sweet-scented, Oronoke, Carolina Red, Gloucester
Glory, Golden Rod sang in my head like a tune, that told of green
forests and magic islands.

But an incident befell ere I left which was to have unforeseen effects
on my future. One afternoon I was in the shooting alley I have spoken
of, making trial of a new size of bullet I had moulded. The place was
just behind Parlane's tavern, and some gentlemen, who had been drinking
there, came out to cool their heads and see the sport. Most of them
were cock-lairds from the Lennox, and, after the Highland fashion, had
in their belts heavy pistols of the old kind which folk called "dags."
They were cumbrous, ill-made things, gaudily ornamented with silver and
Damascus work, fit ornaments for a savage Highland chief, but little
good for serious business, unless a man were only a pace or two from
his opponent. One of them, who had drunk less than the others, came up
to me and very civilly proposed a match. I was nothing loath, so a
course was fixed, and a mutchkin of French _eau de vie_ named as the
prize. I borrowed an old hat from the landlord which had stuck in its
side a small red cockade. The thing was hung as a target in a leafless
cherry tree at twenty paces, and the cockade